With the ever increasing attention to product safety and the prevention of accidents, especially accidents involving children, a need for an improved safety gate latch has become evident. Conventional safety gates used to prevent access of young children to stairways and other places of potential danger include a folding arrangement of bars and a simple latch device usually of the hook and eye type. The major deficiency of this type of gate is that children, even relatively young children, soon learn how to operate the latch and open the gate, thereby creating a dangerous situation. The conventional safety gate is objectionable because it creates in the mind of the child's parent or guardian an illusion of safety which can be more dangerous than not having a gate at all.
The conventional safety gate is also objectionable because the hook and eye latch device attaches the gate to only a single point on the wall, thus creating a condition wherein the hook and eye latch is usually mounted on the upper portion of the gate and the lower portion of the gate is not attached to the wall support structure. The operation of the conventional safety gate is generally clumsy and requires two hands: one hand to locate and operate the hook and eye latch and the other hand to grasp and operate the gate.
In order to be effective a safety gate requires a latch which combines the disparate requirements of having a construction and mode of operation which cannot be easily operated by a child yet can be easily and efficiently operated by an adult. The latch mechanism must be simple, reliable and foolproof, facilitating efficient operation by an adult even in the most trying emergency situations.